Nye County Rangers proposal shelved

In a continued effort to rid the valley of “homeless crime,” Nye County Commissioner Ian Bayne recently proposed the creation of a new unit of law enforcement, the County Rangers.

However, after considering the impact the action might have on the sheriff’s department, as well as the opinion of Nye County’s top law enforcement officer, Bayne made the decision to have his item pulled.

“Item 18 was voluntarily removed by myself,” Bayne explained for his fellow board members and the public as the commission’s May 20 meeting got started. “I have decided to set aside this item, not because Sheriff McGill has persuaded me to or asked me to remove it — he has done neither — but because I would like to not put stress on our sheriff at this time and I was unaware how opposed he was to that program.

“I’d just like to give him the time to enforce our new anti-homeless camping law before attempting to bring anything like item 18 forward again,” Bayne continued. “And it sounds like the sheriff is taking the new law very seriously, so I do believe it’s the right thing to do at this time.”

Co-sponsoring the item was Nye County Commission Chair Ron Boskovich, to whom Bayne extended his thanks for the willingness to support the County Rangers program.

Over the past year, Nye County has been on a mission to stem the rising number of unhoused individuals in the valley via regulations intended to prevent them from occupying private property or public spaces.

The first of these regulations came in the form of Nye County Bill No. 2024-08, which amended Nye County Code Chapter 9 to give the Nye County Sheriff’s Office the authority to cite and arrest anyone unlawfully occupying another’s private property anywhere within the county. The “squatters” bill was presented by McGill and received unanimous approval.

“As any of us see when we drive around, this problem is just getting worse,” Boskovich had remarked when the commission addressed the bill in September last year. “This is a great thing and it needed to be here a long time ago.”

Following up on this, last month the county commissioners also gave the green light to Pahrump Bill No. 2025-01, for which Bayne took the lead. The bill established Pahrump Town Ordinance No. 73 and is similar to the homeless bill approved last September, except that it applies to public property rather than private land.

“It is unlawful for any person to camp in the following areas, except as otherwise provided by this chapter,” the new regulations state. “Any public right-of-way; any trail, park or park facility; any public building, publicly-owned parking lot or publicly-owned land, improved or unimproved; any public property where camping obstructs or interferes with the intended public use of the property.”

Exceptions include emergency situations and those who have proper event permitting for temporary camping in one of the aforementioned areas.

The County Rangers’ duties would have focused on upholding the regulations prohibiting the homeless from setting up on public property. As detailed in the Nye County Commission’s May 20 agenda, if established, the County Rangers would be, “A security force with the powers of peace officers to focus on certain crimes in parks, high-traffic areas and public areas, as part of the Stop Homeless Crime Initiative.”

Contact reporter Robin Hebrock at rhebrock@pvtimes.com